We are really excited to have been appointed by Hampshire Cultural Trust for their Allen Gallery and Gardens project which will transform it into a community focused cultural hub in the centre of Alton, Hampshire.

Development funding has been secured from the National Lottery Heritage Fund which will see designs developed for a new café, courtyard and new flexible community space, refurbished ceramics galleries, a new WH Allen gallery and a dedicated study area for ceramic specialist research. 

We will be working closely with the architectural design team, which includes: Marbas, Martin Thomas Associates, MEA and Pentrevion Fire.

William Herbert Allen’s life as a working artist spanned more than fifty years, from the late 1880s to the early 1940s. He became Art Master and later director at Farnham School of Art, whilst also painting thousands of pictures of the countryside around the south of England and the continent. Regular exhibitions of original WH Allen watercolours and oils take place in the Allen Gallery, which was named in his honour.

Visitors to Alton have been able to see fine English pottery and porcelain in the town since the early 1930s, when local resident Major Ross Bignell first contributed items to the nearby Curtis Museum. Many of these pieces were transferred to the Allen Gallery in 1980 and are still on show today.

The gallery contains pieces by some of the best-known names in ceramics and sculpture. Items by Lucie Rie can be seen and the tin-glazed earthenware collection, containing examples of English and European work, and of international importance. The gallery is also home to a range of sculptures, with a Parian ware bust of Queen Victoria and a bronze sculpture of a woman known as ‘Dolores’ by the American sculptor, Jacob Epstein.